Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-05-30
lterness and this time of complete sym

! times with the domestic life OF these
times. Many of you we're either leaving
ZONE or far away from it, communicating
! by uncertain letter. WHAT q morning
that was when you left home! Father
and mother crying, sisters crying, you
smiling outside but crying inside. Every
| body nervous and excited. Boys of the
blue and gray, whether you istarted from
the banks of the Hudson, or the Savan
nah, or the Androscoggin, don't you re-
member the scenes at the front door, ct
the rail car window, on the steambost
] landing? The huzZa could not drown OIL
the suppressed sadness. Don't you re-
member those charges to write hon.
often, and take good care of yourself, -;
good boys, and the goodbye kiss which
they thought, and you thought, might be
! forever. Then the inconsistencies as you
paced the river bank on starlig ht night
ON picket duty, and the sly tears which
you wiped off when you heard
g group a. the camp fire singing the plan
tation song about the old folks st homes
The dinner Of hard tack on Thanksgiving
day, and the Christmas without any pres
ents, and the long nights in the hospital,
so different from the sickness when you
were at home with mother and sister at
the bedside, and the clock in the hall Civ
ing the exact moment for the medicine;
and that forced march when your legs
ached, and your head ached, aud your
wounds ached, and more than all your
heart sched. Inconsistencies which had
in it a suffocation and
PANG WORSE THAN DEATH.
| You never got hardened as did the
guardsman in the Crimean war, who
/ l. .1,-r |.
al do not want TO see any more crying
letters come to the Crimea from
you. Those l have received l put into
my rife after loading it, and have
! fred them at the Russians, because you
appear to have strong dislike of them.
! If you have seen as many killed as have
! you would not have as many weak ideas
as you now have"
You never felt like that. When SOL
dier'S knapsack was found after his death
in the American war there was generally
a careful package containing & Bible, a
few photographs and letters from home
| On the other hand tens of thousands of
homes waited for news. Parents saying:
"TWenty thousand killed. l wonder if
our boy was among them?" Painting
dead away in poStoffices and telegraph
]
with the sobs and agonies of kindred
waiting for news, or dropping under the
announcement of bad news. Speak,
swamps Of the Clickahominy, and mid
night lagocns, and tre-rafts of the Mis-
sissippi, and gunboats before Vicksburg,
and woods of Antietam, and tell to al the
mountains and valleys and rivers and
lakes of north and south, jeremiads of
! bo& bat III or
Besides that domestic perturbation and
inconsistencies of those days put the sweet
domesticity Of to-day. The only camp
fire you can ever sit ST Is the one kindled
in stove or furnace or hearth, Instead OF
a half ration of salt pork, repast luXuri-
ant because partaken of by loving family
circle and in secret condolences. 0, now
see who those letters are for, the letters
you, the young soldier, took so long ia
your tent to write, and that you were so
particular 10 put in the mail without any
one seeing you least you be leased by
your comrades. God spared you to get
back, and though the old people have
gone you have home of your own con-
struction, and you often contrast
THOSE AWFUL ABSENCES
! and flial and brotherly and loverly heart
breaks with your present residence,
which is the dearest place you will find
this side Of heaven. The place where
! your children were born is the place
where you want TO die. To write the
! figures Of 1862 | set up four crystals
! crystals of tears. To write the figures OF
! 1887 stand up four members of your
! Observation-Disclosures of rosy cheeks aud
haX3u lair, if l can get them to stand
! still long enough.
/ Contrast also the religious opportuni-
ties OF twenty years ago with now. Often
/ on the march from Sunday morn till
night, or commanded by officers who
considered the names of God ard Christ
OF no u.5 except to swear by. Some
times tie dTum0eRd the pulpit, and you
stApd,ar u heat or cOld,all the surround
/ iDgs OF Military life having g tendency to
make you reckless. No privacy for pray
er OF Bic 5-Teading. No sound of church
bells. SaDjaths spent far away from the
] place where you were brought up. Now,
/ the choicest sancJusries, easy pew, all
I ClrlstiaD surroundings, the air full Of
! God and Clrst, and heaven and doXology
Three mountains lifting themselves into
the molly liEht-Mount Sinai laundering
ils law, Mount Calvary pleading the sac
INV FAOuAS 4SS8h NtSPAa1 ms IAS PAOh4-
ised land.
Contrast of national condition: 1862,
spending money, by the millions, in de-
vastation of property and life; 1887, the
finances SO reconstructed that al the
stock gamblers of Wall street combined
cannot make q national panic; 1862,
surgeons of the land setting broken bones,
and amputsting gangrened limbs, and
studying gunshot fractures, and invent
ing easy ambulances for the wounded an
dying; 1887, surgeons giving their atten-
lions TO those in casualty Of agriculture,
of commerce or mechanical life, the rush
ing of the ambulance through our streets,
not suggesting battle but quick relief of
some one
FALLEN IN PEACEFUL INDUSTRIES;
1862, $1,000 900 inhabitants in this land;
1887, 55,000,G00; 1862, wheat about So
100000 bushels; 1887, the wheat will be
about 500, 100000 bushels; 1862, Pacific
C cast five weeks from the Atlantic; 1887,
for three reasons, Union Pacific, Southern
Pacific and Northern Pacific, only seven
days across. Look at the long line of
churches, universities, asylums and
houses with which during the last few
years this land has been decorated -
Living soldiers Of the north ana south,
take new and special ordination at this
season of the year, to garland the sepRAri